I was digging at their MySpace profile for “skeletons in their closet” and I find only this at their bio: “We are a three-piece band from Paris, born in Jan. 2009. Stop reading. This is about music.” And well, actually I have to admit it: music is what exactly not about lately the music business. It’s kind of sick, twisted joke, but actually this is reality. So, let’s take fucking business out of music and focus on music. And one pretty good option might be this Parisian band – meantime becoming quartet – which delivering some quite impressive post-hardcore/post-rock/post-what ever you might thinking of noisy and head kicking music. This is not for trend followers, not for posers. Not for your underage kids too. 😀 This is serious shit and although “A Series of Catastrophes and Consequences” was released in September 2009, it’s still sounding absolutely fresh and brutally honest – honestly brutal. Read more The Prestige – A Series of Catastrophes and Consequences (2009)
Metal
Crown The Empire – Limitless, EP (2011)
As I suspected, new trend rising at the horizon, resulting from the mixture of emocore leftovers and the hursh electro/dubstep. Asking Alexandria get few steps ahead, but already there were a few quite interesting followers such as Given The Day or Crossfaith, not to mention the fresh Korn album which probably will considerably influence a bunch of other bands.
But Crown The Empire delivered an absolutely exciting debut EP consist of 7 intense metal butcheries filled with contorted electronic flavors, but staying metal and brutal.
And Crown The Empire is giving away “Breaking Point” for free by post their message on your Twitter – HERE – which, by the way is one of their great songs.
And no matter how reserved I’m regarding new trends, Crown The Empire kicks ass, but also know to write quality songs, merge musicality, quite singable elements with extreme, death metal like brutality. They future sounds quite promisful, trust me! Read more Crown The Empire – Limitless, EP (2011)
Mr. Pan[K]sament – Hurt (Nine Inch Nails cover, 2011)
[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/29352012″]
Make Me A Donut – MMAD, EP (2011)
This massacre were released from Switzerland and this is a bloody brutal death metal horde which also included in their merciless music modern sounds and some electrifying drum’n’bass/dubstep samples and breaks, hip hop taste-like moments, interludes. It’s a trend right now and those who want to be “up to date” will definitively ride on this dubstep mania, but only a few will actually manage to deliver something worth to mention. MMAD managed to maintain high standards of brutality and they incursions into electronica are only to flavor their murderous riffs, to add aroma to their absolutely aggressive metal. And well, it’s quite convincing, their debut, five track EP shows a determined, surprisingly mature and serious as death metal band. Read more Make Me A Donut – MMAD, EP (2011)
Korn – The Path Of Totality (2011)
They previous venture – and first album delivered to Roadrunner Records – issued friendly, achieved unsatisfactory results. Korn became a brand and it seems they get lost rediscovering their past by recycling it more or less inspired. After selling 63,000 copies during its first week in the US, and landing at number two on the Billboard 200, “Korn III: Remember Who You Are” has sold over all only 170,000 units in the US.
Guitarist James “Munky” Shaffer declared that they’re “definitely moving forward” and mentioned something about a song which reminds him Soundgarden. Than Jonathan Davis released a 14-second sample on SoundCloud in late March, of a new song entitled “Get Up!”, featuring dubstep/electro house artist Skrillex. Dubfuckingwhat?! 😀 Gee! Good that I had wrote about dubstep just a few days back. Still, if you want some quality dubstep, dig out the Brit Subsource – they are just murderous!
But honestly and seriously I doubt it that rockers/metalers will appreciate the latest trend riding from Korn. Read more Korn – The Path Of Totality (2011)
Venom – Fallen Angels (2011)
“Welcome To Hell”, their 1981’s debut album influenced literally thousands of bands, and while Venom were one of the first incarnations of extreme metal their giving the name of a brand new sub-genre of metal with their 82’s, second album: “Black Metal”. Although lending its name to the latter genre, today the album is often regarded as thrash metal rather than black metal. Venom’s music contributed to shape the style and to the development of many metal bands and numerous bands copying styles, themes and imagery from the band. Although even Metallica had opened for Venom on an early ’80s tour, Venom were regarded by many critics and some metal fans as “a trio of buffoons”, but also they had several conflicts with other musicians. In his Black Flag tour diary, Henry Rollins wrote about a 1986 performance when Black Flag opened for Venom and he mentioned that Venom was hilarious, with mediocre playing. Venom replayed by saying: “his band was useless and that’s why he writes books now”.
As teenager back in the 80’s I was quite fascinated by the epic 20-minute title track of their 1984’s “At War with Satan”, but honestly I never took too seriously their Satanic references. But also I have to admit that I wouldn’t bet back then that in 2011 I will listening – and really like it – a brand new Venom album. Read more Venom – Fallen Angels (2011)
Infected Rain – Asylum (2011)
Imagine a band which have some Pantera-like powerful riffs, plays mainly Korn-like twisted themes and have at the microphone a girl who may howling sometimes, but mainly sings like Amy Lee of Evanescence. But they also use samplers, insert contorted dubstep/drum’n’bass breaks and distorted noises in several songs such as “At The Bottom Of The Bottle”, “Judgemental Trap”, “Unwritten Letter”, etc . Not the usual/conventional metal outfit, but still extremely intense and brutal, Infected Rain build up their own blended style.
Formed in 2008, in Chisinau, Republic of Moldova – a landlocked state in Eastern Europe, located between Romania and Ukraine eventually knowned for its wine and pretty girls -, they recorded their first demo in the same year and participated in Crimea at the metal festival Red Alert and played several concerts in Moldova and Ukraine. Read more Infected Rain – Asylum (2011)
Black John Wayne – Serenade Of The Black And Blues (2011)
This might become my favorite metal album of this year. It’s a hell of an album out of the blue. Black John Wayne? Are you kidding me, don’t you? And the answer is, well, no. This is absolutely serious shit. And brilliant. They delivering a killer combination of metal, hardcore and eventually sludge (and even sometimes blues) which sounds like a brutal collision between Slayer, Sick Of It All and Down. This is absolutely deadly! Trust me on this one. It’s been a while since I was excited that much by a metal release, altrough I had listen a lot of interesting products, some of them were quite heavy while others were gloomy and experimental. But this is different: quite groove oriented, full of hardcore energy and armed with cutting edge metal riffs, but also introducing some southern spirit and black musical ingredients (with roots back to blues and gospel), Black John Wayne are both groove and harmony oriented, managed to combine brutality and traditional taste-like musical elements resulting a quite original post-hardcore conglomerate. Read more Black John Wayne – Serenade Of The Black And Blues (2011)
Waltari – Covers All! 25th Anniversary Album (2011)
Known as the crazy metal rockers from Finland, Waltari celebrate 25 years of existence and 20 years from the release of their first album. Frequently combining quite diverse music styles as alternative metal, progressive metal, death metal, hard rock, heavy metal, hip hop, industrial, pop, punk, rap, symphonic metal, techno and thrash metal, most of the band’s music is written by bass player Kärtsy Hatakka, while they lyrics are dealing mainly with personal feelings of anxiety, loneliness and the cruelty of the world, often with heavy irony and sarcasm. They crafted totally new combinations, sounds and approaches, pioneering and assimilating everything that is currently new and becoming a melting pot of musical genres.
Released 11 studio albums and 3 compilations, “Covers All!” deliver a nice collection of covers from diverse artists such as System Of A Down, Midnight Oil, Anthrax, Iron Maiden, Pink Floyd, Madonna, David Bowie, The Cure, etc Read more Waltari – Covers All! 25th Anniversary Album (2011)
Comity – The Journey Is Over Now (2011)
This is a hell of a noisy and contorted release, but a quite brilliant, terrifying and hypnotizing one. And once again, Throatruiner Records give away the digital version for free, “name your price” and download/eventually buy the album or use the direct link from Mediafire – everything is there on the label’s Bandcamp page. We all love the free stuffs, but still, artists are also humans and have to fill up their refrigerators, have to pay their debts, rents and utilities, isn’t it? Not to mention the costs of playing music. And well, never thought about, don’t you? – running a record label, helping bands to go on and eventually break through might be done with love and passion, but still, it’s also a quite honorable job and it must be paid too. As I said before and I will keep on telling this: if we do not support the underground it will disappear eventually and we will be left exclusively with the so-called mainstream s*it delivered by the global corporations.
Throatruiner Records and other indie/DIY underground labels bring to the surface exciting and excellent bands as Comity are. Listen “The Journey Is Over Now” and buy the vinyl, nothing sounds like an authentic record spinning on your pick-up. Read more Comity – The Journey Is Over Now (2011)
